Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Thomas Beecham

Beecham’s Byron A Romantic Lost Chord

“Oh God! If it be thus, and thou art not a madness and a mockery, I yet might be most happy…” So laments Lord Byron’s Manfred when confronted by the specter of Astarte.

Manfred is the quintessential Byronic hero, a romantic superman who endures unimaginable sufferings and mysterious guilt in connection with the death of his beloved. He wanders the Alps, longing for extinction, and meets his fate defiantly, rejecting all authority, corporeal and supernatural.

Robert Schumann was intoxicated by Byron’s dramatic poem from the time he first encountered it at the age of 19 in 1829. In 1848, he began to compose music for it, concurrently with that for his “Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust.’” Wrote Schumann, “I have never before devoted myself to a composition with such love and such exertion of my powers as to ‘Manfred.’” The piece was given its first performance in Weimar in 1852, with Franz Liszt conducting.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear highlights from a recording made 102 years later by Sir Thomas Beecham.

When Beecham came to record Schumann’s incidental music in 1954, it was an act of total reimagination. Unquestionably the work, as written, contains much attractive music. However, if we’re to be completely frank, it can be a bit dramatically static at those times when the music falls silent in deference to florid monologue. Beecham recognized this and enlisted the help of Eugene Goossens and Julius Harrison to assist him in orchestrating a number of Schumann’s piano pieces to be used as underscore for some of the spoken dialogue. He also incorporated a couple of part-songs and even invented a ballet. Fear not! Beecham’s license is nowhere in the same league as that he would later take with Handel’s “Messiah.”

Beecham’s Byronic credentials are unimpeachable. Byron was among his favorite poets. Of course, he also happened to conduct one of the great recordings of “Harold in Italy” (after “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”), with the violist William Primrose. Furthermore, Beecham had been familiar with Schumann’s “Manfred” since at least 1918, when he led two performances of the complete incidental music at the age of 39. Some 36 years later, he decided to resurrect the work via a broadcast performance and then as a program at Royal Festival Hall.

I first encountered this remarkable recording in the 1980s, in the middle of the night, when it was broadcast over the now-extinct WFLN, for 48 years Philadelphia’s classical music station. Henry Varlack used to play it from time to time on his program, “Sleepers Awake.” Finally, having not heard it for a while, I called in to his Friday night/Saturday morning request show, and he told me with regret that the record had become so worn that it was no longer suitable for airplay.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I learned in the mid-‘90s that it was being reissued on CD. I promptly special-ordered it from England, and it couldn’t get here fast enough. That was on the Beecham Collection label – alas now long out of print. It has since appeared and disappeared (like Astarte?) on Sony.

The recording featuring actors, chorus, and orchestra. Laidman Browne may be a bit long-in-the tooth for Byron’s anti-hero, but no one elongates “eeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllll” quite like him.

I hope you’ll join me for “Byronic Beecham,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

January 13, 2019
Schumann’s Birthday Romantic Piano Concertos on WPRB

There will be a battery of Romantic piano concertos this morning on WPRB, as you can probably imagine, as we celebrate the birthday today of Robert Schumann. We’ll be enjoying some of Schumann’s own music, of course, but also representative works by figures he admired and promoted, some of whom numbered among the finest pianists of the day.

At 9:00, we’ll joined by Steven LaCosse, who will be stage directing Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio, ” for The Princeton Festival. He’ll tell us a little bit about the production, which will be presented at McCarter Theatre Center on June 18 & 25.

The highlight of the morning may very well be a rarely heard recording from 1954 of Schumann’s “Manfred,” after the dramatic poem of Lord Byron. The overture is rather well known, but Sir Thomas Beecham recorded the entire thing, with narrator, lending his characteristic Beecham touch not only to the performance, but in his editorial decisions, “livening it up,” as it were, with a part-song or two and adding a ballet.

Get ready for a five hour Romantic interlude, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. We’re ready to tickle some ivories, on Classic Ross Amico.

PHOTO: Robert and Clara Schumann get Romantic

June 8, 2017
Schumann’s Life Music on WPRB

A would-be concert pianist, he’s said to have destroyed his hand through the use of a finger-strengthening device of his own design. He took his underage sweetheart’s father, who also happened to be his teacher, to court to sue for the right to marry, ultimately winning that right the day before she came of age. He went mad from syphilis, hurled himself into the Rhine, and spent his final months in an asylum. His name was Robert Schumann, and he was one of the most romantic of Romantic composers.

Join me tomorrow morning on WPRB, as we celebrate Schumann on the anniversary of his birth with rarely-heard works by the musicians he championed, pieces by lesser-known figures from his circle, and fabulous recordings of some of his own enduring classics. A highlight will be Sir Thomas Beecham’s reading of incidental music composed for Lord Byron’s dramatic poem “Manfred.”

If you’ve got a craving for cravats, drop in (to the Rhine or otherwise) this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. It will be all the Schumann we can shoe in, on Classic Ross Amico.

June 7, 2017
Beecham’s Handel A Lost Chord Celebration

Okay, I missed Handel’s birthday (on February 23). Time to make amends.

Sir Thomas Beecham developed an early love for Handel, at a time when very few of his contemporaries knew more than a handful of his pieces. Certainly the operas and oratorios – with the exception of “Messiah,” which had grown fatter and fatter through years of Victorian adoration – were exceedingly scarce. Beecham despaired of this, since there was so much brilliant music, he knew, embedded within these sleeping giants.

He responded by not only reviving some of the oratorios, in heavily reworked, though for the most part musically sensitive editions, he also arranged choice Handelian morsels into original ballet and concert suites. In doing so, he introduced audiences to much worthy music, which had previously been known only to scholars and specialists.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll listen to Beecham’s at times eccentric, though generally delightful recordings. Alongside the trademark charm of the conductor’s approach comes a thrilling virtuosity in some of the faster music, nowhere better demonstrated than in a 1932 recording of something Beecham called “The Origin of Design,” a suite de ballet distilled from the operas “Ariodante” “Terpsichore,” “Il pastor fido,” “Giulio Cesare,” and “Rinaldo.”

In approaching those oratorios he ventured to present whole (or something like it), Beecham was not only NOT above tinkering with the orchestration, he would toss out entire sections and rearrange mercilessly, all with the aim of cooking up a digestible evening of music which the general public might otherwise just as happily left in the freezer. At its most gauche, Beecham’s method could result in something like his last recording of Handel’s “Messiah,” which he set down in 1959. The re-orchestration was commissioned from Sir Eugene Goossens and features ample cymbal crashes and other eccentricities, which seem somehow to actual sap some of the excitement out of the original music.

Beecham defended his padded “Messiah,” not only pointing to the composer’s documented delight in great demonstrations of sound, but also stating his fear that without some effort along the lines he’d undertaken, the greater portion of Handel’s output would remain unplayed – in his words, “possibly to the satisfaction of armchair purists, but hardly to the advantage of the keenly alive and enquiring concertgoer.”

Despite taking great liberties, Beecham’s recording of Handel’s “Solomon,” set down in 1955-1956, is, in a word, gorgeous. It’s nowhere near what Handel conceived – there’s a huge chunk taken out of the middle, with some of the displaced numbers given refuge in wholly unrelated parts of the oratorio; Solomon, a role generally undertaken these days by a countertenor is assigned to a baritone; the cymbal crashes that disfigure Beecham’s “Messiah” turn up here, as well, but somehow, if one allows oneself to succumb to the Beecham magic, none of it is truly bothersome. In fact, the recording could be deemed an unalloyed delight. It’s not something you’d want as your only “Solomon,” yet it could be the recording of the work you return to the most.

I hope you’ll join me for “Handeling Beecham” – Sir Thomas Beecham conducts Handel – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

March 5, 2017
Haydn’s The Seasons on WPRB Princeton

Taking a look at the weather forecast for the Princeton area reminds us that March can be a crazy time. Spring may be here, according to the calendar, but with mostly sunny skies expected today, with highs in the lower 70s, and breezy conditions on Sunday, with highs in the mid-40s (and more snow on the way next week!), everyone’s thoughts are very much on the seasons.

What better time, then, to enjoy a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio on the subject? Based on texts prepared by Baron Gottfried von Swieten from the poetry of James Thomson, “The Seasons” has always been the poor stepbrother to Haydn’s smash hit, “The Creation.” It’s a critic’s darling, though, and it should be one of yours, too.

You’ll have a chance to enjoy it this morning in a classic performance, one of the best of Sir Thomas Beecham’s later years, beginning in the 8:00 hour.

We’re celebrating the music of Haydn on his birthday until 11:00 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

March 31, 2016

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